After her playing career at UConn ended following the 1991-92 season, the one after the Huskies' first Final Four appearance, Meghan Culmo (then Meghan Pattyson) wasn't quite ready to head back to Doylestown, Pa.

There was more she wanted to do in Storrs, other than scoring 1,000 points in her career and being named the most outstanding player of the 1991 Big East tournament.

"I tried to do as much as I could to stay involved," Culmo said. "I interned in athletic development. I did some work in admissions. I did a lot of different things just to see what was out there, give myself as many different experiences as I could."

And as it turned out, one of the strongest lures was to be an assistant on Geno Auriemma's staff, a desire that became a reality before the 1993-94 season when she and Wendy Davis — her UConn teammate and now head coach at Trinity College — were hired.

For that first year, Culmo helped Auriemma land the freshman class of 1994 that included Kelley Hunt, Brenda Marquis and a high school All-American from Bloomfield, Nykesha Sales. But by the start of the historic 1994-95 season, the one that would help change her life and the sport of women's basketball, Culmo had decided that coaching wasn't for her.

"I loved everything about it for those two years," Culmo said. "And I feel strongly that every kid who plays a college sport should at some point experience what it's like to coach. Then they would realize that every single thing that goes into the program is for them; every drill, every meeting, every meal and party planned. Everything the coaches do is for those players. And until you do all of those things for someone else, you don't fully realize it.

"But I also knew I didn't want to be a head coach. And I knew that at the beginning of the 1994-95 season, although I certainly had no way to know we were going to win the championship that season. I had already made my mind up [to leave] and it was really hard to tell Geno. But I knew I didn't want to be a head coach and I knew I didn't want to go anywhere else to coach."

Over the course of the season, The Courant will look back at the coaches and players who were a part of UConn's first national championship team 20 years ago (1994-95 season).

After the end of her playing career at Virginia in 1991, and one winter in Segovia, Spain, Tonya Cardoza retired from basketball...

(JOHN ALTAVILLA)

As it turned out, she never had the chance to leave. And that second season as an assistant coach was momentous.

Being a part of the first national championship team, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this season, led to a host of opportunities she never could have imagined would come along.

"When I left coaching, I didn't have a job. I bar-tended and I landscaped. I had no money at all. I just knew I didn't want to coach. But I also knew I wanted to get into radio and television," Culmo said. "And so I went to lunch one day with Joe D'Ambrosio [longtime voice of UConn men's basketball and football] and then had the fortunate opportunity to do some radio with him [on UConn women's basketball].

"That was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. I learned so much from him in that one year. I still didn't have a lot of money or food, but that's not a bad thing, in some respects."

That job eventually led to Culmo's being hired to work with Mike Gorman as the broadcast team on CPTV's groundbreaking coverage of Huskies basketball. Since 2012, she's been working as a color analyst on SNY, which broadcasts the women's games now.

"I never envisioned [the present] or what the next 20 years would be like, especially that I would be doing television work for 20 years, that Geno would be in the Hall of Fame, that they would win nine national championships," Culmo said. "None of it was within the realm of possibility to me.

"Who knows what my life would be like now, although I suspect it might not be as full or rich as it is. I would have probably gone back to Pennsylvania. If we didn't win that title, I would have never had the chance to do radio or television. The opportunities the university and the state have offered me as the result of making the smart decision to go to the University of Connecticut when I was 18 years old make me feel like the luckiest person in the world.

"I have the wonderful perspective of remembering what it was like to play in the Field House, to being there for the first game at Gampel Pavilion and seeing what it all is today — where it started to where we are.

Along with her work in TV, Culmo, 44, joined the UConn Foundation and the athletics development staff in January of 2014 and serves as the director of major giving. She focuses on fundraising efforts for capital projects.

She lives in West Hartford with her husband, Angelo, and children Angelo 9, Kathleen 8 and Claire 5.